No matter what comes, we welcome it. This is the way of Buddha. Whatever comes, welcome it. No matter how it looks, welcome it. And in fact, in reality, whatever comes you do welcome it. That’s your original nature.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Each of us has the job of being the person that the universe makes us and doing that completely involves listening to the cries of the world. I can’t be fully me without listening to everybody else. Because everybody else is included in me.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Dharma talk offered by Laura O’Loughin during the one-day sit at Brooklyn Zen Center on May 19, 2018.

Compassion, as we practice it in Buddhism, is the most radical act a human being can do – as well as the most natural. […] In Buddhism […] we say that our natural state of being is compassion and wisdom. And what we are doing in this practice is asking ourselves to come home to ourselves, to our heart, to our birthright. So it’s an act of regaining our dignity as human beings. And then, when we regain our dignity, offering that dignity to others. As the Dalai Lama puts it: “make our own heart our temple.” So what would it be like to walk around with your heart as your temple?

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

In order to get free in this human life we have to meet these parts that are really broken at times. They are not broken out of hatred. They are broken out of a lack of love.

The bodhisattva’s job is to care for the pain of the world, not to take care of the problems of the world…. Who in the world can take care of all of this? None of us can take care of all of this, except all of us. And the way all of us take care of all of this is by caring for the pain that is here.

Let the mind be what it is. Let it be sacred and mundane at the same time. Let it be profoundly boring and sleepy and bright, glowing and brilliant. And when it’s one or the other let it be that.

We are training ourselves – in our bodies, in our minds, through the practice, through the teachings – to make it more likely that in a moment of suffering, in a moment of threat, that we will be able to have an intention to, and maybe some sort of capacity to respond to courageous connection, instead of tightening into separation and division.

Soshin Teah Strozer is Brooklyn Zen Center’s root teacher. Teah is a Zen Buddhist priest, dharma teacher, and lineage-holder in the Soto Zen tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. She received dharma transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman and served as BZC’s guiding teacher until December 2017.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.

Our audio dharma talks are offered free of charge and made possible by the donations we receive. If you would like to support Brooklyn Zen Center, please visit the “Giving” section of our website.